A gaming house contains a large number of gaming machines whose conditions are continuously changing. The conditions of the gaming machines may contain information to be provided to personnel in the gaming house or players. For example, when an abnormal condition occurs on a gaming machine, information on the abnormal condition needs to be provided for personnel in the gaming house. Also, the player needs to be informed of the game play result at a gaming machine. Thus, in the gaming house, communication between the gaming machines and people is required. Particularly, it is necessary to transfer various pieces of information from the gaming machines to people. Hitherto, for example, information has been provided as follows.
Personnel in the gaming house monitor the conditions of each of a large number of gaming machines and when an abnormal condition occurs, take necessary action. Thus, personnel in the gaming house need to be informed of conditions occurring on the gaming machines installed in the gaming house. Such conditions include occurrence of a hitting stop, a jackpot, an illegal act, etc., at the gaming machines, for example.
When a condition which must be informed to the personnel in the gaming house occurs, first the gaming machine where the condition occurs detects it and sends its detection signal to a central information processor which manages the gaming machines, etc. When receiving the signal, the central information processor sends the contents of the condition and information specifying the gaming machine to broadcasting facilities for broadcasting a message such that "stop number X hitting" in the gaming house and displaying necessary items such as "hitting stop" and "number" on a display unit for informing personnel in the gaming house.
However, such broadcasting and display provide only temporary information. Thus, if conditions such as a hitting stop occur at a number of gaming machines at the same time or consecutively, it is difficult for personnel in the gaming house to remember the conditions and the machine numbers. Therefore, personnel need to go to a counter where the gaming house is managed, make a note of the number of the machine being stopped hitting, etc., then again take action for the gaming machines where the conditions such as the hitting stop occurred while referring to the note. Thus, recognition of occurrence of abnormal conditions requires a lot of time and labor, and personnel in the gaming house cannot take prompt action.
On the other hand, information provided for players by the gaming machines includes the game play results. Hitherto, the game play result, such as the number of won game play media, has been recorded on thermosensible paper by a printer installed for each gaming machine, and given to the player for informing him or her of the result. Necessary items, such as digits indicating the number of won game play media, a bar code indicating the digits, a date, time of day, and the number of the gaming machine, are indicated on the receipt.
The player can receive the receipt and take it to an adjustment counter or office to exchange it for a prize (or cash) corresponding to the number of game play media indicated on the receipt.
However, the receipt on which the number of game play media is printed is made of normal paper, and characters, etc., are hard to erase once they have been printed on the paper. Thus, the receipts on which the number of game play media is printed are difficult to reuse and are wasteful of resources. The receipts, which are usually discarded, increase the amount of rubbish.
As described above, hitherto, information transfer to personnel in the gaming house, and that to players, have been executed by different means. This means that an information transfer system from machines to people is not yet established in the gaming house.
The present invention is intended to solve such problems by using recording media that can be used repeatedly.
Material allowing characters, etc., to be written and erased repeatedly as desired, by applying heat and ink erased upon irradiation with light of a specific wavelength, can be used for such a purpose.
By the way, recording media on which characters, etc., can be written and erased repeatedly as desired by applying heat or using special ink, will be gradually degraded by repeated write and erase operation, thus the number of times the recording medium can be used is limited to a given number. Therefore, a system considering the number of times a medium is used is required to repeat information transfer using such a material.
However, the number of times a necessary item has been written onto a card cannot be checked clearly although the use limit can be preset. Therefore, use of a card exceeding the use limit may cause a device handling the degrading card to be placed out of order.